Published 5:30 am, Thursday, September 15, 2005

Newton is executed for slaying her family

She is the first black woman put to death in Texas since Civil War

HUNTSVILLE - Frances Newton, convicted of killing her husband and two children to gain $100,000 in insurance benefits, was executed Wednesday as dozens of death house protesters fervently prayed for her deliverance and chanted their opposition to the state's death penalty.

After weeks of intense legal wrangling, Newton's execution went ahead after the U.S. Supreme Court and Gov. Rick Perry refused to intervene. She was the 349th killer put to death in Texas since executions were resumed in 1982, and the first black woman executed in Texas since the Civil War.

Sentenced to die for the 1987 murders of her husband, Adrian, 23, and the couple's children, Alton, 7, and Farrah, 21 months, Newton offered no final statement. Seemingly nervous, she stared blankly at the ceiling, then turned toward the witness rooms to mouth inaudible words.

In the witness room reserved for her relatives, Newton's sister, Pamela Nelms, cradled her head in her arms, which she had thrust against a rear wall. In the room occupied by her husband's family, a cousin, Tamika Craft-Demming, began to weep when it became apparent the drugs had been administered.

"It's OK. It's over with now," another relative whispered, placing an arm around her shoulder. "Eighteen years. It's over with now."

"Jesus," Craft-Demming began before her voice dissolved into weeping. "Those poor babies."

Protesters call it murder

Later at a news conference, Craft-Demming said, "I had a rough go in that room, but not one tear was for Frances. They were for the kids."

Craft-Demming described Newton as a "mean and evil-spirited person. ... None of these things have been talked about."

Craft-Demming said that without a confession, Newton's death did not constitute justice. A confession, she said, "would have put to rest the lies told about our family."

Outside, protesters, most of whom arrived an hour before the execution, chanted "Frances! Frances! Frances!" for several minutes as the execution was set to begin. They said she was "murdered" or "lynched" because she was poor and black.

Protesters repeatedly chanted, "What do we want? Justice! When do we want it? Now!" Some sang Amazing Grace .

Newton's supporters said that the grass-roots focus on helping the Hurricane Katrina victims hindered the Free Frances movement and contributed to the low turnout for protesters. About 75 protesters appeared — a fraction of the hundreds who turned out at Karla Faye Tucker's execution in 1998.

Tucker, a pickax killer, was the first woman executed in Texas since executions were reinstated.

"I pray that God will forgive us for not being organized to help our sister Frances," said Houston activist Quanell X.

As the execution took place, protesters hoisted an effigy of Newton — a stuffed orange jumpsuit with a painted face — from a rope.

Always claimed innocence

Newton, 40, consistently proclaimed her innocence, contending her family was killed by drug dealers to whom her husband owed money. Adrian Newton, she has said, used and sold drugs, and often was in fear of his suppliers.

For death penalty opponents, Newton's case seemed to embody everything they found wrong with capital punishment. In her initial trial, she was represented by an attorney who acknowledged he had done little to research the case and later was suspended by the State Bar of Texas.

When Newton received a stay to, in part, retest incriminating stains on the dress she wore the night of the killings, defense attorneys were stunned to learn earlier testing had destroyed the evidence.

Although defense attorneys crafted appeals based on claims that two, possibly three, pistols were seized as evidence — calling into question assertions that a gun Newton admitted hiding had been the murder weapon — their efforts got nowhere.

Assistant District Attorney Roe Wilson repeatedly insisted that only one pistol had been recovered, and recanted as a slip of the tongue a videotaped statement in which she had confirmed a second gun's existence.

Even the parents of Newton's dead husband, Tom and Virginia Louis, were marshaled to plead with the pardons board.

"All my prayers and hopes are that she won't get executed," Virginia Louis said Wednesday in a telephone interview.

But in the end, efforts in and out of court accomplished little.

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals found that defense attorney Ron Mock had provided adequate representation and that the defense's multiple-gun theory was just a previously weighed and rejected argument in new clothes.

Her final hours

On Tuesday, Newton was escorted from the women's death row at Gatesville to the Goree Unit in Huntsville. By early afternoon, she was at the Walls Unit, home of the state's death house. Perry rejected Newton's petition for a 30-day stay at 5:50 p.m. The poisons were administered at 6:09 p.m.

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